You know the drill: if you've landed here first, you'll likely want to read Part I (at least), Part II, and Part III. We're continuing our analysis of spatial vectors in opening screens of NES videogames with four more titles dated between 1987 and 1990. The first is the 'sequel' to Super Mario Bros. Title: Super Mario Bros. 2 Genre: Platformer Release Date: July '87 (FDS) / Oct. '88 (NES) Carrier: Center, near top of screen Carrier vector(s): Down (strong) Beacon(s): Door ...
If you haven't already, please see Part I and Part II of this series. Now that we've established a formal vocabulary, let's take a look at a series of Famicom/NES games that present interesting variations of the patterns seen in Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. I've arranged these chronologically by ...
In Part I, I introduced the concept of spatial vectors as they apply to the opening screen of Super Mario Bros. (If you haven't done so, read that article first, or little of the following will make sense.) Before reviewing other NES examples, let's take a look at the original ...
Poring over NES and Famicom games for the past year and a half has led to a lot of thinking about game design structures, especially those that cue players about how to move through two-dimensional spaces. I was the kid in the 1980s who read through the manual prior to ...
For those of you clamoring for links to every Legend of Zelda cold run session in a single post, get ready for satisfaction: Introduction, wherein I describe the cold run project. Session 1, wherein I die in the first dungeon and get lost in the forest. Session 2, wherein I bomb for secrets ...